Day 8 Sunday 22/12/2024 Buronga, warm windy

We have a quiet morning watching the PS Rothbury paddling back and forth with tourists. After lunch we take a drive out to Trentham Estate at Trentham Cliffs to pick up our online wine order that we’d asked them to hold as we’d be up this way. We’re surprised at how busy the place is, like hello, it’s lunch time, it’s Sunday and it’s Xmas! They’re run off their feet, so we tell them that we’ll come back tomorrow when it’s not so busy and they give us a bottle of their Vermentino.

Staying on the NSW side of the river we decide to visit Wentworth, out through Gol Gol, Dareton, Coomealla and Curlwaa. I get excited about Curlwaa because growing up on an orchard we were surrounded by wooden fruit cases with colourful labels and an unusual name like Curlwaa does stick in your mind.

Wentworth is dead quiet, but looks welcoming with its shady trees, charming buildings and the Darling River*. We return by another old lift bridge, sorry no photos, I was driving, on through Merbein and Mildura.

The breeze strengthens. We cook dinner, salmon, in the camp kitchen because it is well equipped and has lovely views of the river.

About 11:00pm the wind picks up and we race about scantily clad unravelling Xmas lights and bringing the awning in. Better safe than sorry.

Accom: $32.00, Fuel: $66.00

*The Darling River bringing water from as far north as Central Queensland meets the Murray at Wentworth. The headwaters of the Murray are in the Southern Alps. From Wentworth the river flows to South Australia where it turns south to the ocean at Goolwa.